Blues legend 'tells it how it is'

IF anyone embodied the spirit of Manchester City in the golden era under Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison in the late 60s and early 70s, it was Mike Doyle - and now he has lifted the lid on his Maine Road years.

IF anyone embodied the spirit of Manchester City in the golden era under Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison in the late 60s and early 70s, it was Mike Doyle.

Doyle - "Tommy" to his City team-mates - perhaps did not enjoy the fame and adulation heaped upon the shoulders of some of the more flamboyant members of that fabulous title-winning side.

Nor did he seek it. Doyle was the foot-soldier behind generals like Colin Bell, Francis Lee and Mike Summerbee.

The policeman's son from Reddish had a hatred of all things Red which at times bordered on the pathological.

Doyle, you suspect, would have played for his beloved Blues for nothing. But don't underestimate the part he played in the most successful period in Manchester City's history.

As legends go, he is right up there with the best of them. More than 550 senior appearances in 16 seasons at Maine Road between 1962 and 1978. A League Championship medal in 1968. An FA Cup winner the following season. A key member of the City side which won the European Cup Winners' Cup and the domestic Football League Cup in 1970 which he held aloft again as the team's skipper six years later.

Careers don't come much better than that. But since bringing that magnificent playing career to an end at Rochdale two decades ago, the old warrior has kept his own counsel.

Now, however, in his late 50s, he has lifted the lid on his years at Maine Road and his life outside soccer in a riveting autobiography: "Blue Blood - the Mike Doyle Story".

The book, written with the help of City official magazine editor David Clayton, makes uncomfortable reading at times. But that's how "Tommy" would have wanted it.

From his earliest days as an apprentice at Maine Road, he told it as he saw it. And it's clear that the passing years have not changed that.

Doyle gives a frank and at times harrowing account of his battle against alcoholism and the rift his addiction caused within his marriage and his family. But this is no cry for pity. As someone who watched and admired him at close quarters during my own shambolic career at Maine Road, it was with immense relief and pleasure that I read he's got his life back on track and is now reunited with his wife, Cheryl.

At his lowest ebb, when he was quite literally drinking himself into an early grave, he still had his memories. And what fabulous memories they are of the days when four kids from Liverpool conquered the world and a team in sky blue were the kings of English football.

Doyle has only one championship medal to show for his time at Maine Road. But he insists he should have had two. And he says he wasn't robbed of that second medal by a championship rival but by one of his own City team-mates - Rodney Marsh.

Says Doyle: "When Marsh arrived in 1972 the season was drawing towards its close and we were bang on course for the title.

"At that stage we were about three points clear of the nearest contenders and so long as we kept on turning in the sort of performances we had been doing, it was difficult to see anyone stopping us from winning the title.

"We were playing Chelsea and that was the game in which Rodney made his debut. Tony Towers lost his place that day and although we won by the only goal of the game, we recognised that we had achieved victory only by the skin of our teeth.

"Marsh was a stone overweight and I told Malcolm Allison exactly what I thought about his decision to leave out Tony Towers.

"From the moment Marsh stepped onto the pitch as a City player, the team started to go backwards. He had fantastic ability but was only worried about himself.

"Was I prejudiced against Rodney? I don't think so, but I've always believed that football is a team game and I was a team man right throughout my career. Marsh was an extrovert. He was so out of the ordinary it wasn't true. He appeared to be a law unto himself out there on the park. Rodney, I felt, was a Marsh man and not a City man.

"At the end of that season it was Derby County who were crowned League champions and to my dying day, I will remain convinced we would have won if only we had played it cool with regard to Rodney.

"You got the impression - well at least I did - that he got more pleasure slipping the ball through an opponent's legs than scoring a goal which could have meant two points.

"The one thing that turned most of the lads against Marsh was after the League Cup final against Wolves in 1974. We had been beaten fair and square but if Tony Towers had played, I think it would have been different.

"We stood in a line when Wolves went to collect the trophy and clapped them when they came down, and shook hands with each player. Mike Bailey, the Wolves skipper, asked me what was up with Marsh and when I looked around, he was sloping off to the dressing room without collecting his tankard or applauding the winners. And that wasn't what we, as a team, were about.

"In the end, Rodney returned to London and it was good riddance to him. Showmanship doesn't make champions as a general rule and the way we threw the First Division title down the drain in 1972 still leaves a bad taste in my mouth."